How Not To Be An Asshole
I recently read a book titled, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, by Robert Sutton. Sutton explains how every company and organization should have a no asshole rule. He goes into detail how to avoid hiring people who are assholes and also ways to get assholes to leave the organization once you found out they were poisoning the workplace.
A big takeaway from this book for me was in chapter four titled “How to stop your “inner jerk” from getting out.” When he started describing a party that Kurt Vonnegut went to at a billionaire’s house with his friend Joseph Heller. Kurt asked Joseph how it made him feel that their host made so much more money compared to him. Kurt replied back with “I’ve got something he can never have. The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
If we were all happy with what we have in this exact moment I can see a lot of people being less of a jerk, judgmental and just happier people.
Another story that I love from this book is one about a woman named Ruth who worked with assholes. She put into practice two very important tactics that helped her deal with them in the workplace.
- Ruth learned to reframe the nastiness that she faced n ways that helped her become emotionally detached from the assholes
- Ruth didn’t struggle against larger forces that she couldn’t control. She focused instead on small ways to gain tidbits of control.
I highly recommend reading this book if you have encountered or encounter assholes on a regular basis, which I believe everyone can relate to at one point in time in their life.
